Familiarization and feminization of care in Psychosocial Care: the daily lives of family caregivers in a CAPS in Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

This work sought to analyze care relationships in the field of Psychosocial Attention, the current mental health assistance policy by the SUS, in the dimension of its familiarization and feminization based on the psychiatric Reform process. Considering that the State acts in the co-management of mental health care with the family nucleus, we hypothesized that the reformulation of mental health policy is grounded in and reinforces the historical feminization of caregiving, strongly influenced by racialization and intersected by class and territorial inequalities. The objective of the research was to analyze the relationship between gender and care through an ethnographic study in a CAPS, observing the daily lives of female family caregivers in this service. Among the specific objectives, we sought to investigate the management of mental health care, pointing to discussions between gender, care and work, and observing similarities and distances between emic and analytical categories. The familiarization of care in Psychosocial Attention points to a very unequal occupation of care responsibilities, which reproduces the bases of a societal model in which this task is delegated to women who find themselves in vulnerable conditions, contributing to their double erasure, both as caregivers without adequate support, such as subjects who require care.

Keywords:
Women; Care; Gender; Psychiatric Reform; CAPS